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But Jones doesn’t get lost in, or distracted by the detail. He moves with ease between macro lens and panorama, between the granular and the lofty, and sees the overall trends for what they are. His distaste for the Tories is writ large, but don’t be fooled; there is real political writing here too – thoughtful, informed assessment sits underneath the venom. That’s why his punches hit home, both in his online commentaries and in this substantial book. Jones knows his oats.
At the centre of this decade of disaster lies the Brexit vote, not so much the nadir as the point of inflexion at which the collapse in government competence, honesty and standards in public life abruptly accelerated. As Jones puts it
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In The Decade in Tory, Jones gives us a magnificent tour of misconduct in public office and venal malfeasance on a scale the country should have a collective nightmare about. As Jones points out It's absolutely fine to scream occasionally whole reading this book. You can probably tell that I'm very much part of the target audience. I remember much of what is covered from when it happened. I probably tutted at each individual scandal at the time. Reading about them now, one after the other, piled up next to each other, made me angry, exasperated and sad. Sad that we have been played by these incompetents for so long. However, while my notes and highlights are filled with "lol" or even "lol lol lol" I often had to qualify this with "sad lol" or "angry lol" because to read this catalogue of conservative iniquity is to be enraged at what the bastards have got away with - and continue to get away with. One of humour's powers is how it lowers the traditional barriers of established thinking (like lowering the shields on the Enterprise) and gives a brief opportunity for the photon torpedo of truth to get through (I may have overworked that analogy), so it might be tempting to give copies to any right leaning people in your circle?! And if there was anything wrong or unjust in how Jones describes his many Tory targets (over half of Tory MPs who served in the years 2010 to 2020 are named in this litany of failure) I am sure they would come out to refute his claims...
It's too much to hope for that anyone other than a tax-dodging billionaire with a seat in the House of Lords who still wants to vote Tory will read this and pause for thought, but for the rest of us - and perhaps for more sanguine generations yet to come (assuming the world survives the current iteration of disaster capitalism) - it will serve as a crucial, engaging and clear-eyed testament of how badly wrong a once-decent country can go in the space of a few years when it is led by the most incompetent, venal and cruel group of people you could possibly assemble. The Decade In Tory is a bravura performance. Substantial, meticulous, incredible, depressing, hilarious, rude – and essential reading. As a History graduate, it occurred to me that books like this are actually quite rare: a meticulous, conscientiously-cited account of basically every awful thing that a Conservative-led Government did over a ten-year period. Normally, such corruption and mendacity would be summarised in a few sentences or at best a couple of paragraphs of a book trying to cover a longer period or make more sweeping points about an era or macro-trend. As such, I think that behind its sarcastic exterior, it's actually a really important documenting of a disastrous decade when Britain's body politic, society and public discourse were dragged to depths from which the country as we previously knew it may never properly recover.
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But Jones' book shows that - while no politician is likely to be perfect - they most definitely are not all the same. Nearly 75 years on from Nye Bevan's Manchester speech, his words ring as true as ever What is Toryism but organised spivvery? … No amount of cajolery can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party The last decade has been indistinguishable from a rollercoaster drawn by M. C. Escher, composed entirely of nauseating descents."
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